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The trip to this damned rainy planet was already a lost cause in Obi-Wan’s own personal opinion. Now granted, the Chancellor had not asked Obi-Wan’s personal opinion when he’d sent the 212th in search of an up-and-coming pirate operation on the basis of a few rumors. Hell, at this point nobody asked for Obi-Wan’s opinion on anything. Certainly not Anakin, who had eagerly helped the Chancellor send them off despite Obi-Wan’s insistence that the Senate should send someone less vital to the war effort at large. Oddly enough, Padme had been at the ship port for their send off, standing behind a happily waving Anakin.
“No one listens to me,” Obi-Wan grumbled aloud from under the deep hood of his cloak. He tried holding fistfuls of the brown fabric up and out of the mud, only to stumble over something unseen and drop all of it at once into the sludge. Cody continued to look at his datapad, scrolling idly from his place next to Obi-Wan. His bucket was clipped to his belt for now, leaving Obi-Wan plenty able to see his handsomely scarred face.
“What was that, sir?” The smile in his voice revealed his betrayal as much as his words did. He could hear Ghost Company snickering behind them, the whole lot of them traitors. Obi-Wan harrumphed and crossed his arms as they surveyed the area, the mud and wetness of it all. Why any pirates would want to set up shop here was beyond him.
They’d been on the lookout for days and had yet to find even a trace of a pirate or even anything nefarious happening. Obi-Wan was convinced the Chancellor was trying to get him off planet for some reason or another, and it certainly wasn’t for a surprise party. Now, he was stuck here with not a pirate in sight and so much mud he was up to his ankles in it by the time dinner came around. A week of this and Obi-Wan was already vying to high tail it for the nearest inhabited planet. Somewhere with a beach, maybe.
“This place shouldn’t even be deemed a habitable system,” Obi-Wan declared, trying to yank his boot out of another deep hole filled with mud. The ground kept sinking beneath his feet, and if he wasn’t surrounded by Ghost Company Obi-Wan would worry about falling all the way into the ground, never to be seen again. “I may never get the filth out of this cloak.”
“At least that’s all we have to worry about,” Cody offered him. “No Sith lords or crazy bugs trying to kill us.”
“Yet,” Wooley pointed out with a snicker.
Obi-Wan sighed, and walked right under a large leaf just in time for it to drop a bucket's worth of water over his head. He stood deathly still, right in the middle of the humid hellscape of a planet, and just… reflected. Just a light reflection of how, of all the shit missions to get stuck with, he got this one.
“I am pushing my negative emotions into the Force,” Obi-Wan said to himself through gritted teeth. It was a futile effort to ground himself in the moment, something Qui-Gon seemed to think he needed a lot of teaching in when he was a Padawan. Fat lot of good it did, because Obi-Wan still wanted to lay down in the mud and let this planet swallow him up like it had been trying to do ever since the battalion landed.
His troops marched right past him, with Cody turning to offer him an expression of amusement in the form of a cocked head and a smirk. “Sir, with all due respect, the only thing you’re doing is pouting.”
He turned and kept walking, leaving Obi-Wan to huff and follow after them, catching up to Cody with a hand on his pauldron. “For the record, Jedi Masters don’t pout.”
Cody turned around to fix Obi-Wan with a raised eyebrow, eyes dropping momentarily to look at Obi-Wan’s hand on him before looking back up again. “ My Jedi pouts. People wonder where General Skywalker gets it from until they see you looking like you’d rather battle Ventress than trudge through the mud.”
He didn’t even look remotely annoyed, only amused, and the small part of Obi-Wan that knew he was being ridiculous was grateful for his friend. Cody was either crazy to put up with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies for this long, or some kind of benevolent god sent down to make sure Obi-Wan didn’t get himself tossed out of an airlock. At least while Anakin wasn’t around to act even stupider.
Or maybe Cody felt the same thing that Obi-Wan did when he caught Cody giving his last ration bar to a shiny, or when he found Cody asleep over his well-loved regulation handbook. Maybe the thing that made Cody look at him like this was the same thing that made butterflies erupt in Obi-Wan’s stomach when he saw his commander from across the battlefield, the firefight lighting him up in the Force like a supernova. But Obi-Wan couldn’t even ask, didn’t dare to, not with the war looming over all of them and their roles holding them to duty first. Instead, he would just keep letting himself stare at Cody like some kind of junior padawan.
Obi-Wan smiled briefly at Cody and clapped him on the shoulder. Even if this planet was an awful fool’s errand created to torture Obi-Wan for something that happened in a past life, at least he had Cody. He had Ghost Company, and he had the 212th, and it was probably a good thing that this planet didn’t have any hidden pirates on it because The Republic definitely couldn’t handle more piracy than–
Obi-Wan tried to take a step forward and his boot remained firmly stuck in the soft planet floor.
He stilled, the happiness dropping out of his stomach as he attempted to set his boot into motion once more. The mud made a horrible squelching protest at that, and it only served to make it swallow his limb even further, this time sucking even more of his calf into the grime. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, tried to keep his patience and fortitude from stretching like a rubber band pulled too tight.
“Of all the ridiculous things to happen–” Obi-Wan groused, reaching down to use his own hands to try and pull his leg free. It remained firmly and stubbornly encased in mud, and now the hem of his cloak was falling again, another layer for him to wash off once they all trek back to the Negotiator. Obi-Wan groaned, and it caught Cody’s attention enough to make him turn back around.
“General?” he asked. “Is something wrong w– oh.”
“This infernal boot!” Obi-Wan exclaimed, yanking even harder. Cody jogged back towards him from where the rest of Ghost Company had stopped, reaching out to hold onto one of Obi-Wan’s arms for support. Obi-Wan swatted him away, continuing to try to escape the mud on his own. He was a renowned Jedi, Force damn it, and he was not about to be bested by his own karking boot. “I’ve got it–!”
The next few moments were a series of errors that could have been easily prevented if only Obi-Wan was a little less stubborn and Cody was a little less protective. Because, Obi-Wan thought to himself as he ripped his boot out of the ground, then they wouldn’t have been so close and Obi-Wan would not have tried to balance himself using his dear Commander himself.
Obi-Wan lurched forward with the momentum of the pressure release on his leg, arms flailing for purchase as he found himself facing a muddy landing. One of his hands connected with Cody’s backplate and Obi-Wan held on tight, the other hand windmilling. Cody lost his balance, stumbling down into the mud after Obi-Wan. They landed together in the sludge and grime Obi-Wan had been trying so hard to avoid, with Cody’s arms bracketing Obi-Wan’s shoulders and their chests pressed up against each other.
“This miserable planet!” Obi-Wan sputtered. Before he could launch into another long-winded tirade about the gross shortcomings of the miserable and wretched world the Chancellor had sent them to, Cody had reached up with one hand to smear mud down the front of Obi-Wan’s tabard.
Obi-Wan looked at him, aghast, and Cody rolled off of him in a fit of laughter, cackling so hard he was rolling in the mud. Obi-Wan just watched him, frowning just so that Cody would laugh again when he saw the ridiculous expression. Finally, Cody’s giggles died down and he pointed at Obi-Wan. “That is for dragging me into the mud with you.”
Obi-Wan snorted and scooped up a handful of mud to fling at Cody, landing it squarely on his neck and chin. “And that is for not retaining enough balance to save us both,” Obi-Wan shot back, shaking the mud off his hand with a cheeky grin. Cody sat up, the shit-eating look on his face only promising more trouble for the both of them.
“Oh it’s on,” Cody said, and without further preamble he launched himself at Obi-Wan in a tackle. Obi-Wan made an unmanly screeching noise and fell backwards, using his motion to roll Cody under him and splash mud into his face. They both laughed, rolling around in the mud like children, covered in head to toe with mud and only making it worse.
“What the shit, sirs?”
Cody and Obi-Wan froze to see the rest of Ghost Company staring at them from beyond the worst of the mud. They surely made for an odd sight, coated in a sheen of mud and each holding a wad of mud in the air ready to throw it at the other. Wooley had taken off his helmet to stare at them, jaw agape. Waxer and Boil were whispering without taking their eyes off either man. Longshot was the one that had spoken, and he was standing with one hand on his hip.
Obi-Wan slung his mud ball at Cody.
“You karking nerfherder!” Cody exclaimed. He dropped the mud in his hands and grabbed at Obi-Wan, pulling him up out of the mud and over one shoulder like a sack of kavasa. Obi-Wan yelled and playfully batted him away. Cody paraded him through the mud like some kind of strange dance, letting the General’s torso swing slightly where he hung down, the man scowling stubbornly just to be spiteful.
Finally, Obi-Wan lost his composure when Cody turned so that he could see Ghost Company watching the two of them, Wooley staring at them two of them in resigned befuddlement. Obi-Wan broke into a grin, laughing brightly when Cody spun around and took Obi-Wan with him. In retaliation, Obi-wan shoved his mud-covered hands down the back of Cody’s blacks, causing the man to yell and wrinkle his nose in disgust. Boil shook Wooley by the shoulders.
“Only Ghost Company gets to see our superiors acting like… bizarre idiots,” Boil pointed out, all of them watching as Obi-Wan argued the logistics of why he hadn’t asked Cody to carry him through the mud from the get-go. Cody looked like he was ready to drop the man in filth again. “Just enjoy it, Wooley.”
(“But really Cody, I have mud in places that have never even seen the light of day.”
“Try wearing armor. Honestly, it’s a miracle we even got this far from the ship without incident. I’ll notify Holster to prep for takeoff, we’re not gonna find any pirates.”
“What would I ever do without you, dear?”)